CHKDSK, Corruption and Consistency

Printable View

07-09-2006, 09:43 PM
Speed

CHKDSK, Corruption and Consistency

Hello,

Here's an intro as I think it's pretty relevant, I'm sorry it's a bit on the long side, but I wanted to make sure everything was mentioned so please bare with me as I really do need some help with this. Especially from those who have experience with Hard Drive corruption and Windows CHKDSK problems. If you'd rather skip to the questions that I need help with then go to the end of this post, but for it all to make sense I’d recommend you at least scan the below info. Thanks in advance for those who can help.

Basically one of my systems (used by my sister) has had some semi serious problems for a good while now, every now and again it would get BSOD's on start-up and sometimes the Windows XP checker would pop up with the message "Drive C: needs to be checked for consistency". It would usually find a few problems, delete some corrupted files, recover a few and boot into Windows normally. Those problems and a few application/game errors were about it, no other major stability problems though.

So once first happened I of course suspected the Hard Drive cable first, tried another, didn't fix it, and scanned the hard drive several times with Western Digitals DOS based Diagnostic software, which it passed several times with no errors on both the quick and long scans. I did everything I could think of, memtest to check the Ram, Formatted and Reinstalled Windows but nothing seemed to sort it. Although I can't be certain I'm pretty sure that I even swapped out the hard drive in the end and that still didn't fix it, but my memory isn't what it used to be. Either way I assumed that the motherboard was faulty and planned a much needed upgrade replacing nearly everything with more trusted and powerful parts.

The problems were still happening but a few days ago I managed to get all the parts I needed and I therefore backed up her files on my main computer by transferring them over the network to a folder in the main C: directory. I then assembled the computer and nearly every part was changed Including Case, Power Supply, Processor, Motherboard, Graphics card etc. The only parts that were not changed were the Hard Drive, CD-Rom/Floppy Cables, Floppy Drive and the Ram. Even the hard drive cable was changed for something brand new, an Akasa cable that I use in all my other machines without any problems. Everything went fine, Windows installed great and I got all the drivers, Windows Updates installed. Installed some applications, games and the usual things she uses and everything looked great. I did a few stress tests, ATI Tool, 3DMark 05/06 and a game or two just to make sure everything was working fine and it was. The only slight glitch I had is hardly worth mentioning but I will for the sake of it, I used Riva tuner to lower the fan speed on the 6800 Ultra as it’s pretty loud and I think I went too low. The temp was only around 85c at load but ATI Tool still picked up some artifacts, either way I increased the fan speed and the problems went away. I then transferred back some of the backup's including e-mails, game saves and so fourth along with some file's that were backed up as well. After that the computer was shut down.

Now today I started it up but wasn't in the room when it did, I installed some drivers for printer and then rebooted. I watched the reboot process and to my horror the "Drive C: needs to be checked for consistency" message came up and it found a few problems as usual and started up. I checked the application logs in the Control Panel and found out that it had done that this morning as well, when I first started the computer up but this was the first time it happened. I then decided that I might as well run CHKDSK manually, so went to CMD, typed "CHKDSK C: /F /R", it needed to reboot and it ran it on start-up like the automatic test. Doing it this way however tests a few extra things so took longer, but it did find problems again as usual. I did this again and it found problems and the final time I did it, there were no problems.

So I thought great, however when I came back, expecting it to be sitting on the Windows Desktop there was the old "We apologise for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully... etc". Giving you a 30 odd seconds to select from the 3 types of Safe Mode, Last Known Good Configuration or to Start Windows Normally. None of which work, no matter which one you select and if you press enter or let the time run out the screen goes black and the system reboots. Just my luck!

As you can well understand I'm not sure what to think, if it was just CHKDSK checking the drive for consistency after I transferred her backups then I would of course think that they were corrupted on the old system due to the motherboard, but as I can’t get into Windows I’m really lost as to what could have caused it. I've just completed two runs of Western Digitals Diagnostic software with No Errors. The Windows XP SP2 installation CD is fine, as I've used it before with no problems. I’ve also done a few passes of MemTest with no problems, although I guessed that it would be fine. So I'm not sure what to do, anyways here are my questions, some I think you'll already of guessed.

Question 1: Is it possible for a hard drive to be faulty and yet pass the manufacturers own diagnostic scanner? Anyone had any experience of this? Especially if the drive turned out to be what was causing the corruption.

Question 2: Could these backed up corrupt files be missed by the operating system of the system used to store them, if they were simply transferred to the hard drive in a folder. My thinking is that as they were not part of any sort of file system, the main computer that they were stored on didn't pick them up. Although I don't know much about this sort of thing and could be way off.

Question 3: Could a few corrupt files non-system files actually do what I last mentioned or was it CHKDSK deleting files that caused the problem? My guess would be the latter.

Question 4: If it was CHKDSK that was causing the problems, then surely that means there's something wrong, either hardware or driver wise. Any ideas considering the tests and results I’ve gotten.

Question 5: Is it possible a faulty CD-Rom cable could cause these problems? I’ve never had problems with it before but I guess it’s worth considering now.

I've heard that the nForce IDE SW driver causing problems, but seeing as the other motherboard was VIA, I can't see that explaining how both computers have the same problems.

I think it’s a bit pointless putting the full specification of both systems down as so much has changed between the two but the Hard Drive is a Western Digital WD800JD which is an 80 GB, SATA, 8 MB Cache, 7200 RPM drive of which I have 5 including this one, the other 4 are fine and this one is of course unknown. That being said however, the other 4 are run in pairs using Mirror Raid while this is the only one I have running on its own. The previous motherboard was an Asus A8V Deluxe, VIA chipset, AGP and 939 Socket. The current is an Asus A8N-E, NF4, PCI-E and again 939 Socket of which I have two more, both work perfectly. If anyone specification details then please let me know. As mentioned I have two other A8N-E systems, both work fine and one has very similar specifications.

Any other suggestions, experiences or theories would be greatly appreciated; I really do need to get this problem sorted as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Mark
07-09-2006, 10:08 PM
Max Tractor

Some quickies, nf4/sata and specifically but not exclusive maxtors, were known to give data corruption have a read here

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=8171

I noticed you encountered it with a via chipset.

I would be looking at the hd or the memory, I see you ran the manufactures hd tool, try active smart and hd tune.

I would then try the memory, and test sticks one at a time, and then in current slots in use together.

Memtest/Memtest86+

edit

Yes I would un-install the nvidia ide driver, just use windows default

You can also turn off CHKDSK so you won't get it a boot
07-09-2006, 10:46 PM
Speed

Quote:

Originally Posted by Max Tractor

Some quickies, nf4/sata and specifically but not exclusive maxtors, were known to give data corruption have a read here

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=8171

I noticed you encountered it with a via chipset.

I would be looking at the hd or the memory, I see you ran the manufactures hd tool, try active smart and hd tune.

I would then try the memory, and test sticks one at a time, and then in current slots in use together.

Memtest/Memtest86+

edit

Yes I would un-install the nvidia ide driver, just use windows default

You can also turn off CHKDSK so you won't get it a boot

Thanks for your reply.

I'll take a look at the link, while searching for nForce IDE SW driver I did notice references of NF4 Data Corruption and did do a bit more research. But that doesn't explain the same errors on a VIA and NF4 system unless if it of course a rather annoying coincidence.

I'll try those smart tools you listed, I have however tried Memtest86+ as I mentioned and I'm sure it would pick up errors regardless where the Modules are placed and how many, they seem fine in Dual Channel.

As for the IDE driver, yes I won't install it next time if I have to format, or uninstall if I don't. As for CHKDSK, it never ran every boot and there's no point turning it off as it's the tell tell sign that tells me if the solution has worked.
08-09-2006, 01:12 AM
jamin

Sounds a bit like a problem i had with my parents comp.

I rebuilt it about 3 years ago after the PSU detonated (literally, never buy a cheap PSU believe me) about 2 weeks ago, mum calls me and says she has problems with it. Booted it, blue screen while loading "Unmountable boot volume"

Checked MSKB, found the answer, did it, rebooted, "Unmountable Boot volume"

Long story short, Memtest+ for 8 hours, no fault with RAM, new CPU cooler as was 45c in bios, same problem. Removed and swapped VGA, PSU etc.... Same problem. Tried a spare Hard drive, windows installs OK, rebooted 3 times or so, "Unmountable boot volume"

Much scratching of head etc..... Noticed the USB mem card reader hidden behind a flap built into the cheap (but smart) ebuyer case which was plugged directly into a USB header on the motherboard, Unplugged it, tried the MS fix on the newer HD, works fine for as many reboots as I can be arsed to do. Put original HD back, did MS fix + then CHKDSK....... Been working fine ever since!

Got anything plugged directly into the usb headers?
08-09-2006, 11:34 AM
Speed

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamin

Sounds a bit like a problem i had with my parents comp.

I rebuilt it about 3 years ago after the PSU detonated (literally, never buy a cheap PSU believe me) about 2 weeks ago, mum calls me and says she has problems with it. Booted it, blue screen while loading "Unmountable boot volume"

Checked MSKB, found the answer, did it, rebooted, "Unmountable Boot volume"

Long story short, Memtest+ for 8 hours, no fault with RAM, new CPU cooler as was 45c in bios, same problem. Removed and swapped VGA, PSU etc.... Same problem. Tried a spare Hard drive, windows installs OK, rebooted 3 times or so, "Unmountable boot volume"

Much scratching of head etc..... Noticed the USB mem card reader hidden behind a flap built into the cheap (but smart) ebuyer case which was plugged directly into a USB header on the motherboard, Unplugged it, tried the MS fix on the newer HD, works fine for as many reboots as I can be arsed to do. Put original HD back, did MS fix + then CHKDSK....... Been working fine ever since!

Got anything plugged directly into the usb headers?

Thanks for your reply.

Yes there is, but only external USB ports for the case. Not sure if that would have any effect as it's a different case, both did have external USB ports so I guess it's worth a try.
08-09-2006, 01:00 PM
Speed

Right a quick update, in the end I left MemTest running and it did 7 passes with no errors. This morning I attempted to repair Windows so I booted from the Windows CD and hoped that I could do a repair install, however the previous installation was not recognized by the CD's setup wizard showing this screen...

http://www.mark-lewis.me.uk/images/hpi1.jpg

After some research and checking out things I already knew I worked out a few things I could try from the Recovery Console.

http://www.mark-lewis.me.uk/images/hpi2.jpg

After seeing that message for "fixmbr" I decided to try some other things before that.

http://www.mark-lewis.me.uk/images/hpi3.jpg
(Excuse the blurring, but it's just about readable). I tried "fixboot" but even if the operation was successful it didn't sort the problem and the computer has the same symptoms as before.

http://www.mark-lewis.me.uk/images/hpi4.jpg
"bootcfg /rebuild" this time, couldn't be completed due to a corrupt file system. Doesn't look good!

http://www.mark-lewis.me.uk/images/hpi5.jpg
So I actually used "fixmbr" this time and although it appeared to work it didn't sort the problem. It does also mention the whole "non-standard or invalid master boot record" which also isn't a good sign.

Does anyone have any other suggestions to try before I write Zero's to the drive and reinstall Windows?
08-09-2006, 02:00 PM
Max Tractor

Did you run any of the tools I suggested on the hd. You had the same hd in the via board?
08-09-2006, 02:02 PM
Speed

Quote:

Originally Posted by Max Tractor

Did you run any of the tools I suggested on the hd. You had the same hd in the via board?

I had a quick look at the tools, but they both seem to be Windows based, so I'll need to reinstall before using them.

As for the Hard Drive, yes same one as on the VIA board, as mentioned it was one of the only parts not changed.
09-09-2006, 11:58 PM
Speed

Another Update: I've wiped the drive using WD's Diagnostic tool using the Full version of "Write Zero's to Drive" and then reinstalled Windows. I installed all the same drivers, updates and the basic things like firewall and AV.

I was about to do a CHKDSK and spotted this in the Event Viewer under System:

Date: 09/09/2006
Time: 12:28:08
Type: Error
Source: Ntfs
Category: Disk
Event ID: 55

Description: The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume C:.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Oh yes and on reboot it wasn't much of a suprise that CHKDSK wanted to check the drive for Consistancy.

I actually skipped the tests for consistancy to see what would happen, although I did run two manual CHKDSK runs using the /f /r modifiers which found problems. I have also installed HD Tune and Active Smart as you suggested Max Tractor, which among other things check the SMART data from the drive. It appears with the hard drive passing both WD’s test and being fine with regards to SMART data that I can rule out the hard drive as being faulty, although that of course doesn’t rule it out as being the problem. I've just tried a new CD-Rom cable but haven't got round to reinstalling Windows yet, however I'm pretty sure it won't make any difference and it appears I’ve gotten desperate. But I guess it’s good to rule things like this out, one less thing it could be!

I have had plenty of suggestions so I guess tomorrow will be another big testing day. :rolleyes: God I hate these types of problems, so many possible causes, would have been nice if it was the hard drive and a simple replacement would sort it out!
13-09-2006, 06:12 PM
Speed

Here's an update:

I decided to do something that to be honest I should have done sooner, take the hard drive out of the system and try it in another. So I did, formatted it using WD's Diagnostic Tools (Write Zero's To Drive - Full) and installed Windows, then straight away I ran CHKDSK and this came up:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 18 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 18 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 18 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
Windows replaced bad clusters in file 9915
of name \WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\obrb0414.dll.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

78140128 KB total disk space.
3230944 KB in 9790 files.
2400 KB in 628 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
78780 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
74828004 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
19535032 total allocation units on disk.
18707001 allocation units available on disk.

I then changed the cable for one used fine on other systems and got pretty much the same, although no mention of "bad clusters" this time, but I'm guessing that was just luck:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 18 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 18 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 18 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.

78140128 KB total disk space.
3231056 KB in 9796 files.
2404 KB in 628 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
78824 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
74827844 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
19535032 total allocation units on disk.
18706961 allocation units available on disk.

So of course there are only (in my mind) three things that could cause the problems on both systems:

1. The Hard Drive is indeed Faulty
2. The Hard Drive doesn't like the motherboard (same as the problem system), older firmware may have something to do with this.
3. The Windows Installation is slightly bad.

I went for the fact that the hard drive is faulty, simply because the Windows installation has been used before with no problems and even if it is slightly bad I'm not happy that it caused the failure of Windows on the problem system.

This was sealed by Western Digitals reply:

Well my main question is simply this, can a hard drive pass your DOS based Data Lifeguard Diagnostic software on both tests numerous times yet still be faulty? Yes. Although it passes out tests there is clearly some surface damage on the drive. The built in error correction is at work to repair the drive while it is being tested and used and therefore it passes tests, but Windows gives problems because sectors are being reallocated. You have done a lot of troubleshooting and all that is left is to exchange the drive. We are happy to swap the drive under warranty in this case.

I decided not to RMA it yet as I wanted to order another drive and make sure that it was indeed the Hard Drive at fault, I really do want to see the back of this problem for good.

The Hard Drive arrived today, it's a WD2500KS (SE16, 250GB), which will be used in my main pc, freeing up two WD800JD's for the problem system.

So I set it up, did the same test on the non-problem system as I had before. Installing Windows, doing the CHKDSK right away and this is what happened:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 18 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 18 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 18 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.

244187968 KB total disk space.
3230924 KB in 9790 files.
2400 KB in 628 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
83876 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
240870768 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
61046992 total allocation units on disk.
60217692 allocation units available on disk.

I was really wishing for this to be the end of it and for it to be a clean CHKDSK run, so I'm not quite sure what to think. These CHKDSK runs once Windows is installed are hardly the most definitive checks to see if the "Checking for Consistency" problems will occur. So it's possible that the installation CD is slightly damaged or that this is normal and happens on every installation. I'm going to try and get another installation CD, until then I'd be happy to hear some opinions and thoughts on this.

I am hoping that someone would be willing to do me a small favour. If you have a spare Hard Drive, or are going to reinstall Windows XP Pro SP2 anyways, could you run CHKDSK once you get into Windows, before anything else and post the results. Running it is easy. Go to Run, Type CMD, In the Command Prompt Window type "CHKDSK c: /f /r" and press enter. It should say that it cannot lock the drive and needs rebooting, press Y and Reboot. One thing to mention though, is that even if it appears there are no errors while running it it's best to check the logs as errors have appeared in there that were not present when the test was running. To see this go to the control panel, then Administrative Tools, Event View and then Application. You are looking for the latest entry of "WinLogon" which will give you a break down of the test, it will look very similar to what I've posted, if a bit longer.

If you've got to the end of all this, thanks for reading and I look forward to people’s thoughts and opinions.
13-09-2006, 07:18 PM
Max Tractor

disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 996 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 996 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 996 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

20482843 KB total disk space.
4398532 KB in 22701 files.
8584 KB in 2303 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
206479 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
15869248 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
5120710 total allocation units on disk.
3967312 allocation units available on disk.

====

This is not a clean xp install
13-09-2006, 07:47 PM
Max Tractor

ran it again

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up 5 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 5 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 5 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.

20482843 KB total disk space.
4399148 KB in 22731 files.
8584 KB in 2307 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
206483 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
15868628 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
5120710 total allocation units on disk.
3967157 allocation units available on disk.
13-09-2006, 08:06 PM
jamiecockrill

either way, i admire your tenacity! For the sake of an 80GB HDD, for which I had the data backed up, I'dve dumped and run! The thread should certainly serve as an education piece for others though.

Incidentally, i deleted the MBR on a HDD once (dont ask how!), thankfully not the one with Windows installed on and I managed to find some info in the Microsoft Knowledge Base about how to go about repairing it. Depending on your version of windows, there's a backup record either in the middle, or at the end of the drive. In essence it's as easy as copying and pasting it back to where it should be at the beginning of the drive. However I had the priviledge of doing this all through Windows, however that might've been possible by removing it and sticking it in a stable PC.

Certainly sounds like the drive is buggered though. I had a drive die on my once and the SMART wotsit in the BIOS never showed signs of the disk failing, so I can only presume that as WD said, certain error correcting mechanisms stop the drive showing up as faulty, when its actually about the croak.

ah well. well persevered though!
13-09-2006, 08:12 PM
Splash

How hot is it running? I had a similar problem in one of my boxes a couple of years back - installed a 120mm fan in front of the drives, did a full format and reinstalled OS and both drives (both were in system at the time) have been fine since.
13-09-2006, 09:21 PM
Speed

Quote:

Originally Posted by Max Tractor

ran it again

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up 5 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 5 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 5 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.

20482843 KB total disk space.
4399148 KB in 22731 files.
8584 KB in 2307 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
206483 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
15868628 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
5120710 total allocation units on disk.
3967157 allocation units available on disk.

Thanks for doing that... twice. That's similar to what I'm getting but can anyone run it on a fresh install, the same as I'm doing?

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamiecockrill

either way, i admire your tenacity! For the sake of an 80GB HDD, for which I had the data backed up, I'dve dumped and run! The thread should certainly serve as an education piece for others though.

Incidentally, i deleted the MBR on a HDD once (dont ask how!), thankfully not the one with Windows installed on and I managed to find some info in the Microsoft Knowledge Base about how to go about repairing it. Depending on your version of windows, there's a backup record either in the middle, or at the end of the drive. In essence it's as easy as copying and pasting it back to where it should be at the beginning of the drive. However I had the priviledge of doing this all through Windows, however that might've been possible by removing it and sticking it in a stable PC.

Certainly sounds like the drive is buggered though. I had a drive die on my once and the SMART wotsit in the BIOS never showed signs of the disk failing, so I can only presume that as WD said, certain error correcting mechanisms stop the drive showing up as faulty, when its actually about the croak.

ah well. well persevered though!

Well I'm keeping at as if I don't it will simply happen again, not to mention I wasn't certain it's the hard drive.

As for when Windows actually went down after I assembled the new system, I'm not sure what you did would have helped. As I mentioned I tried numerous things none of which did anything, so my best guess is the whole image was corrupted and beyond help.

Indeed, I also have SMART enabled on the motherboards and it hasn't picked anything up, but then again nor did the SMART utilities, so I guess it's not that sort of problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Splash

How hot is it running? I had a similar problem in one of my boxes a couple of years back - installed a 120mm fan in front of the drives, did a full format and reinstalled OS and both drives (both were in system at the time) have been fine since.

When it was in the problem system, I used the SMART utilities which show temperatures as well as other data and everything was in safe numbers. Things like SpinRite made the temperature go up more than anything else, but again within safe limits. As for when I changed systems, it was out side of the case, so temperatures would have been even better, so I don’t think that’s the problem.
14-09-2006, 12:43 PM
Speed

I'm starting to see that these "cleaning up unused Index entries" are normal and after trying another installation CD the same problems appeared:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 17 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 17 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 17 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.

244187968 KB total disk space.
3273880 KB in 10088 files.
2484 KB in 641 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
84196 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
240827408 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
61046992 total allocation units on disk.
60206852 allocation units available on disk.

So this could well be normal, although that being said I'd still be grateful for someone else with a Windows XP installation (even better if it's XP Pro SP2) to do what I'm doing, installing a fresh copy of Windows on a formatted drive and running CHKDSK right away in the same process I've been doing to ensure that it is 100% normal for a new installation, details/instructions in my last post.

If it does turn out to be normal then I'm going to have to find another way of testing both this old drive and a new one. From what I see this will be installing Windows and waiting (god I hate waiting!) to see if the "Checking for consistency" message comes up again on it's own.
14-09-2006, 12:52 PM
Max Tractor

I really think you have solved the problem, the hd was borked, as per my chkdsk, it seems normal, normal usage should now ensue. I understand where you are coming from, hd/data corruption is a nightmare, I have experienced it myself(new drive) and it a B------ to trouble shoot. Use the drive/system and see what occurs
16-09-2006, 02:13 PM
Speed

Quote:

Originally Posted by Max Tractor

I really think you have solved the problem, the hd was borked, as per my chkdsk, it seems normal, normal usage should now ensue. I understand where you are coming from, hd/data corruption is a nightmare, I have experienced it myself(new drive) and it a B------ to trouble shoot. Use the drive/system and see what occurs

Well I've come to the conclusion that the "unused index entries" that CHKDSK finds are normal. Likely they are just created through the day to day use of Windows and it's something that CHKDSK is designed to remove to keep everything tidy. So I can't really use that as any sort of "tell tell problem is still there" tester.

I also tried to recreate the "checking for consistency" error with the original drive and I couldn't, this was likely down to the fact that the computer wasn't in normal use and I just installed things and messed around to try and get it to appear. I have however had enough of trying to troubleshoot the problem, like you say and this thread shows hd/data corruption troubleshooting is a nightmare. So as everything seems to point towards the hard drive I've swapped it out for another WD800JD that I freed up by using that new 250Gb Drive I purchased. This WD800JD I'm using now has been running in my system under mirror raid for ages now so it should be fine. I've decided not to change anything else that I haven't already. That way as long as I keep the data backed up I can see if it really was the hard drive causing the problems. Then in a months time (assuming there have been no problems) I'll reformat and use the second spare WD800JD in mirror raid like the system they were in before.

Although only time will tell if the problem is sorted I'd just like to thank anyone and everyone who helped out by posting here and getting in contact elsewhere. I’ll likely post here every now and again with updates on any problems or (hopefully) lack of problems.

One last question however, can someone who has RMA’d a drive to Western Digital tell me what they do if they find it’s not faulty and if they do find it’s faulty do they tell you?

Thanks Again!